FLIPPING BOOK CHRONICLE 2024

OBITUARIES

senior personnel were retrenched or offered packages. Mike subsequently continued practising and working under contract with other quantity surveyors, virtually to the very end. In 1999 Mike and Isla lost their son Sean in an accident while working in Tala Valley. The Land Rover that Sean was driving flipped over. His passengers were thrown out to safety but Sean, being powerful like Mike, held on and was tragically crushed. Around 2016, Mike was diagnosed with a heart valve defect that was not serious, but required surgery when he was ready. Mike held off the procedure for several years while he tried to generate sufficient income to meet the costs. He had the operation in about 2020. The valve implant was itself successful, but Mike did not come around from the anaesthetic and remained in a coma for over a month. The fact that he recovered from this as well as he did reflects the level of his strength and determination. There is no doubt that Mike’s physical and mental capabilities were negatively affected by that experience. In early November 2023 he lost his daughter Pippa to breast cancer after a long and brave battle. Pippa was unmarried, which left Mike and Isla with no heirs or close relatives other than Mike’s sister Jill, who was 18 years his junior. Mike eventually succumbed to complications around a dog bite on 18 January this year, while at Wembley House. Anecdotes While Mike was at university, his father Jack bought him a car on condition he abstained from spirits. Mike duly obeyed and thus started his love for cars and motor sports. During Mike’s final year at university, Bernard, who was interested in a young French girl, arranged for Mike to partner his girlfriend’s cousin from Mauritius. She could not speak a word of English, but was stunningly beautiful. She asked Mike to dance and was full on into him on the dance floor. Being the absolute country gentleman, Mike was embarrassed out of his mind, and had difficulty handling the

matriculated from Michaelhouse in 1953.

ARNOTT, MICHAEL MURRAY Born 1936, Died 2024 Michaelhouse 1950-1953

He attended Natal University in Durban from 1954 to 1957 and qualified as a quantity surveyor. During his time at university he worked part-time for Walters & Simpson and for the year after qualifying. His later to be partner in practice, Bernard Binney, three years’ Mike’s senior, was also working there. They met and became good friends. In 1958 Walters & Simpson had little work, resulting in Bernard moving to London and Mike probably to Cape Town. This is the grey area. Mike did not enjoy Cape Town and I think returned to Durban, where he must have met Isla and left to work in Kenya. He came back and married Isla in a little church in Mount Edgecombe on 11 January 1964. The two of them then returned to Kenya. Mike and Isla left Kenya round about 1965 and joined Fordyce Quantity Surveyors to run their Ladysmith office. Bernard Binney, meanwhile, had been to and fro from London and, without being aware of Mike’s situation, joined the same firm, but in the Johannesburg office. In 1967 Fordyce offered some of his staff partnerships, but Mike and Bernard were very unhappy with just a 5 percent stake and, at Mike’s suggestion, they decided to practise for themselves from 1968 in Pietermaritzburg in the name of Arnott & Binney. Mike and Isla lived in a flat for a few years, and in the early 1970s both Mike and Bernard bought properties in Birnam Wood. Mike started building his own wooden A-frame home on HighBirnam before their daughter Philippa was born and they lived under plastic cover for a few years while Mike continued to build the bedroom A-frame and the link between. Once it was liveable he never felt compelled to properly complete his vision. Pippa was born in 1973, followed by their son Sean in 1976. Mike and Bernard parted in 2011 after which Mike practised on his own account for a while, but a downturn in the economy led to him taking a position as technical director with the Natal Parks Board, later KZN Wildlife. Restructuring at KZN Wildlife followed and most

During a visit by Jean and me in the middle of Mike’s recent hospitalisation, at a time when he was fairly lucid, he told us a little of his early life. At that stage we did not expect him to leave us, so rather than take in his story we suggested that he should record it all when he was feeling stronger. With this vague start I set about gathering more information about his life, but some grey gaps emerged, so my apologies for a few possibly incorrect assumptions. For all the 55 years that I knew and worked with Mike, he was quiet about his history and I was concerned that I would not have enough information to convey his story. After collating what I could establish, I realised that I could babble on for far too long, so had to reconsider my whole approach and just summarise his journey. I will start by presenting a succinct list of the major events in his life in order to convey a broad overview, then talk about anecdotes, his likes and dislikes, achievements and difficulties, and finally his feelings, nature and the kind of person that he really was. His major events He was born on the farm Murraydene in Highflats on 19 June 1936 to Marge and Jack Arnott, and christened Michael Murray Arnott. Murray is a family name consistently used in the male line from the 19th century; it emanated from the surname of his great-grandfather George Arnott’s second wife, Betsy Murray. One of George’s sons, William Arnott, came to South Africa in 1879 and then brought out his siblings in 1901, including his half-brother Tom Arnott, being Mike’s grandfather, who, strangely, added the surname of his stepmother and not his own mother (Stewart). When war broke out, Mike’s father Jack was seconded as an officer to Syria, and Marge moved to Durban where she could find employment. Jack had attended Treverton and Michaelhouse, so Mike and his brother Bruce followed as boarders from 1944. Both were academically gifted and obtained scholarships to ease their father’s financial burden. Mike

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